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This is a slightly askew photo of the Parkdale District Office of the City of Toronto's Department of Health, located at 1115 Queen Street West.
Jun. 2nd, 2009
The fact that it's starting to be kitten season, at least throughout Canada, reminds me of the fact that I adopted Shakespeare from the Toronto Humane Society in late September when he was probably ten weeks old and that he was probably conceived at the beginning of this season. When I adopted Shakespeare, I appreciated the fact that he was living in what looked to be a very comfortable and well-maintained cage, and that the other cats and animals that I saw also seemed to be comfortable, even the ones infected with FIV. I'd nothing bad to say about the THS.
Now, however, the Globe and Mail has a very unsettling and disturbing series (1, 2, 3) suggesting that the Toronto Humane Society is mistreating animals, achieving a well-advertised low kill rate at the expense of allowing animals which are clearly suffering to endure days or weeks or even months of unnecessary pain. This very upsetting series of photos shows neglected animals, both those suffering from incurable and painful conditions and those living in horrible conditions. The Society's president, Tim Trow, is assigned responsibility for this, with he and his supporters on the board systematically winnowing out volunteers and employees who object to the conditions within the Humane Society's facilities.
The outrage and shock prompted by this series has prompted the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to animals has launched an investigation of the THS.
All this news makes be sad and angry, but I'm just thankful that, at eleven months of age, glossy-coated Shakespeare is just as veterinarian-confirmed healthy as I'd want.
Now, however, the Globe and Mail has a very unsettling and disturbing series (1, 2, 3) suggesting that the Toronto Humane Society is mistreating animals, achieving a well-advertised low kill rate at the expense of allowing animals which are clearly suffering to endure days or weeks or even months of unnecessary pain. This very upsetting series of photos shows neglected animals, both those suffering from incurable and painful conditions and those living in horrible conditions. The Society's president, Tim Trow, is assigned responsibility for this, with he and his supporters on the board systematically winnowing out volunteers and employees who object to the conditions within the Humane Society's facilities.
The outrage and shock prompted by this series has prompted the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to animals has launched an investigation of the THS.
The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says it will launch an investigation into the Toronto Humane Society.
The humane society is being accused of allowing the unnecessary suffering of animals through its euthanasia policy.
Kristen Williams, spokeswoman for the SPCA, said Monday the allegations include animals being left in distress.
"The Ontario SPCA takes euthanasia very seriously. It's only done when there is no other humane option available. Some of the reasons would include terminal illness, or injury where there's no possibility of recovery, behavioural problems that pose a threat to other animals or humans, stray or feral overpopulation, or disease transmission," said Williams.
The SPCA probe comes as a result of an investigative series by the Globe and Mail.
Williams said there are also allegations concerning governance at the Toronto Humane Society, which operates independently but is accountable to the SPCA.
All this news makes be sad and angry, but I'm just thankful that, at eleven months of age, glossy-coated Shakespeare is just as veterinarian-confirmed healthy as I'd want.
Torontoist has a wonderful piece on the first arrival of the Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger airline, in Toronto.
Operated by the UAE's Emirates Airlines and used on aa new flight to Dubai, apparently the main problem with it is that it isn't making enough flights. Blame the Tories of for this, of course.
The Torontoist post has a huge number of photos of the plane. Go, see.
The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. The largest passenger airliner in the world, the A380 made its maiden flight on 27 April 2005 from Toulouse, France, and made its first commercial flight on 25 October 2007 from Singapore to Sydney with Singapore Airlines. The aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX during much of its development phase, but the nickname Superjumbo has since become associated with it.
The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, and its width is equivalent to that of a widebody aircraft. This allows for a cabin with 50% more floor space than the next-largest airliner, the Boeing 747-400, and provides seating for 525 people in standard three-class configuration or up to 853 people in all economy class configurations.[7] The A380 is offered in passenger and freighter versions. The A380-800, the passenger model, is the largest passenger airliner in the world, but has a shorter fuselage than the Airbus A340-600, which is Airbus's next-biggest passenger aeroplane. The A380-800F, the freighter model, is offered as one of the largest freight aircraft, with a listed payload capacity exceeded only by the Antonov An-225. The A380-800 has a design range of 15,200 km (8,200 nmi), sufficient to fly from Boston to Hong Kong for example, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h or 560 mph at cruising altitude). It is the first commercial jet capable of using GTL-based fuel.
Operated by the UAE's Emirates Airlines and used on aa new flight to Dubai, apparently the main problem with it is that it isn't making enough flights. Blame the Tories of for this, of course.
"This is the only city in the Americas that Emirates is flying the 380," explained Philips. "We do an awful lot of exporting of manufactured goods, IT goods, many of our architects, our engineers, our legal, our accountants are working in Dubai."
"The only constraint in our growing relationship is probably capacity to work together, so I want to just add our voice to many other voices in convincing the federal government that perhaps we do need more than three flights a week."
When we asked him why he seemed frustrated, Councillor Kyle Rae was more blunt: "They're flying in three times a week, and they want to fly in five times a week. The federal government won't give them permission. There's a six-month delay getting cargo onto this flight. It is an economic engine, it is an important opportunity for international trade, and the federal government—because this is Toronto—is not giving them landing rights. This is interference in the marketplace and it has to stop."
Federal Tourism Minister Diane Ablonczy was also in attendance and all smiles, but found fingers pointed at her. Said McCallion: "Madame Minister, [the airport] needs a little more cooperation from the federal government. We are the largest airport in Canada, but other airports get a better deal than we get."
The urgency is rooted in the increasing importance and influence of Dubai on the international scene, especially as it relates to tourism. Formerly a tiny desert community of 183,000 people, the population has ballooned to 1.5 million in only three decades, only 10% of which are now Emiraties. One of the world's most audacious skylines has appeared only relatively recently with the explicit intention of attracting affluent westerners to the "Vegas of the Middle East," where many of the rules of this strict Muslim society are relaxed for the sake of tourism.
The Torontoist post has a huge number of photos of the plane. Go, see.
[REVIEW] Angels and Demons
Jun. 2nd, 2009 02:57 pmThursday, while it was raining, I caught the new Dan Brown movie adaptation Angels and Demons at the Varsity Cinema. I was pleased to discover that it was actually a good popcorn movie and that its pacing and plot was decidedly better than The Da Vinci Code's. I just have three non-spoiler things to write about the film.
- Having CERN generate grams of antimatter, quantities substantial enough to form droplets and create five-kiloton explosions is ludicrous. Besides, more energy goes into creating antimatter than you would get out of the antimatter's annihilation, making it useless as a power source.
- The film's perspective on the Roman Catholic Church and its history may make the various medievalists and church historians I know tear.
- Normally I consider the phrase "Liberal Agenda" to be a sure marker of some right-wing nut, but actually, that phrase is perfectly suited for this movie.
As Tim Gueguen noted, yesterday was the first day that Canadians needed to take passports in order to cross the American border. It's gotten quite a lot of coverage, not least because the way this post-9/11 measure has divided cities once functionally fused, like Ontario's Sarnia and Michigan's Port Huron as Patrick White observed in The Globe and Mail.
Never mind the situation facing Québec's Stanstead and Vermont's Derby Line, which actually form a functionally fused community, with the border line dividing houses. Some people have wondered whether people will need passports in order to get into their kitchens.
Since the vision of Canadian-American union advocated by journalist like John Ibbitson is very unlikely to come to pass, Canadians are going to have to get used to this. It makes me sad, it makes me need to update my passport, it makes me wish that the Schengen Accord was a transatlantic deal. Regardless, some people are reacting better to this new measure than others. Take the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne, a reserve which straddles the borders of Canada's Ontario and Québec and New York State in a very complicated arrangement that has facilitated an illegal cross-border trade in cigarettes and is immensely complicated by the Mohawks' claim to sovereignty. The arming of border guards is immensely controversial, so much so that it sparked massive protests.
Perhaps ironically, the crossing into Canada has been closed.
The Blackhawk helicopters thump past Mike Bradley's river-view apartment like clockwork. When he hears the first chopper, he knows it's 10 a.m. The second, at noon, means it's nearly time for lunch. “Every day,” says Mr. Bradley, mayor of Sarnia, Ont. “They're from the Coast Guard or the military, and they just patrol the river, up and down.”
Not long ago, he would gaze across the St. Clair River to a town barely discernible from his own. Sarnia and Port Huron, Mich., were sister cities, sharing much more than a stretch of border. Shoppers hopped the line freely. Cross-border sports rivalries formed. The renowned International Symphony Orchestra, both a source and a symbol of harmony, drew players and audiences from either side of the St. Clair. Like so many towns along the “world's longest undefended border,” they considered it a mere line on paper, a legalism laid every mile along the land in concrete obelisks.
Today, the symphony and the camaraderie are faltering as the United States adds a physical dimension to the mapmaker's stroke. Most obtrusive of all, Mr. Bradley says, are $20-million worth of Boeing surveillance towers going up across the water from his living room. “I'm so close in my apartment, they'll probably see me in my underwear drinking a beer,” the mayor says. “This is no longer the world's friendliest border. That just no longer exists.”
Back in Sarnia, Mayor Bradley is preparing for the worst, come June 1. The new rules stopping anyone without a passport, microchip-equipped driver's licence or frequent-crosser card apply to Americans as well as Canadians, a requirement he expects will impede the flow of U.S. traffic into his city.
“It will be devastating,” he says. “Not just for Sarnia, but for the whole country. The average American is not going to get a passport just to make the odd trip to Canada.”
[. . .]
Given that cross-border trade runs to half-a-trillion dollars a year – about $1.5-billion every day – Mr. Bradley's concerns are warranted. Canadian businesses that rely on the U.S. have yet to get over 9/11, when the American government closed the border crossings – and the economic spigots that nourish Canadian industry.
In their book The Impacts of 9/11 on Canada-U.S. Trade, authors Steve Globerman and Paul Storer, who both teach business at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., detail how Canadian exports would be 15 to 20 per cent higher now had the U.S. kept the border open that day. U.S. businesses have regained every penny of cross-border trade they lost; Canadian ones have not.
Never mind the situation facing Québec's Stanstead and Vermont's Derby Line, which actually form a functionally fused community, with the border line dividing houses. Some people have wondered whether people will need passports in order to get into their kitchens.
Since the vision of Canadian-American union advocated by journalist like John Ibbitson is very unlikely to come to pass, Canadians are going to have to get used to this. It makes me sad, it makes me need to update my passport, it makes me wish that the Schengen Accord was a transatlantic deal. Regardless, some people are reacting better to this new measure than others. Take the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne, a reserve which straddles the borders of Canada's Ontario and Québec and New York State in a very complicated arrangement that has facilitated an illegal cross-border trade in cigarettes and is immensely complicated by the Mohawks' claim to sovereignty. The arming of border guards is immensely controversial, so much so that it sparked massive protests.
Akwesasne Mohawks are once again being allowed to cross the Seaway International Bridge from Cornwall onto their territory, but the Canadian border post remains closed.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) shut down its post on the Mohawk territory that straddles Quebec, Ontario and the U.S. early Monday morning after Mohawk leaders warned they would not tolerate guns in their community.
The border guards were scheduled to start carrying 9-mm handguns Monday morning under a new federal policy.
'They're so nasty and harassing our people that we can almost feel ... their finger being itchy on the trigger,' said John Boots, a Mohawk from Akwesasne.
[. . .]
The Mohawk protesters are angry about guards being allowed to carry guns, because they say it violates their sovereignty, and increases the likelihood of violent confrontations.
The Mohawk protesters reportedly cheered when news of the border guards' departure became known.
"They're so nasty and harassing our people that we can almost feel ... their finger being itchy on the trigger," said John Boots, a Mohawk from Akwesasne.
But the CBSA points out U.S. guards working on the territory have carried guns for decades without any problems.
Perhaps ironically, the crossing into Canada has been closed.